-The Times of India AURANGABAD/ PUNE: An 11-month-old boy from Maharashtra's Beed district has been found infected with the vaccine derived polio virus (VDPV). This is the first such case in the state and the third in the country since March 2012. Health officials said the boy's stool sample tested positive for VDPV on June 1. "The child has been ill for prolonged periods, indicating the possibility of immunodeficiency," an official said. The...

-The Telegraph The medical fraternity is worried over the seizure of sub-standard and fake drugs, at times lethal for patients. Police on Wednesday seized 30 boxes of suspected spurious drugs from a cart in the Gandhi Maidan area. Station House Officer of Gandhi Maidan police station Rajbindu Prasad said nobody could produce transaction bills for the consignment. The drugs seized were ofloxacin (for respiratory tract Infections), oflozen (for typhoid), ossopan (calcium tablets prescribed...

-Frontline India has persistently high rates of newborn mortality, over three lakh a year, and accounts for 29 per cent of all first-day deaths globally. MORE than one million babies die on the first day of life globally, making the first 24 hours the most dangerous day for babies in nearly every country. These are some of the key findings in Save the Children's 14th annual "State of the World's Mothers" report: Every...

-The Telegraph The Union health ministry has signalled its intentions to go ahead with plans to introduce a cadre of rural health care providers through a new BSc course, ignoring objections from a parliamentary panel. The ministry told Delhi High Court this week that it had sent a draft cabinet note on the three-and-a-half-year course in community health to the Prime Minister's Office for comments. This is standard procedure before the matter...

Argumentative Indians are at it again! After sparring over the poverty line and the actual number of poor, India's renowned economists have fired up a fresh debate over the extent of malnutrition. In the earlier debate, the Planning Commission ‘reduced' poverty on paper disregarding NSSO and official committees, including the NCEUS, which determined that 77% Indians survived on less than Rs 20 a day. Columbia university economist Arvind Panagariya has...